Oni wrote:I bought the top 4 oolongs from Tea from Taiwan, and I am really impressed with the Wu Ling, I rearly write about teas, because I rarely find something I really enjoy, but I like it better than any tea this year, I found the balance of aroma, aftertaste, and mouthfeel just clicks toghether, it is a brilliant tea, better than the more expencieve Long Feng Xia, or the Da Yu Ling, or Hua Hang, all of them more expencieve, I believe there the teamaster got something really right this year, I remember last years TFT teas none were this good.

I concur, I was surprised by the TFT Wuling tea and brewed it many different ways in different vessels, all with quality results. Very good tea!

The Wu Ling and Long Feng Xia are my favorite teas from them. The DYL is also very good but more costly. This company has consistently high quality tea. 2 thumbs up.

茶藝-TeaArt08 wrote:Yesterday my wife, son, and I went to a beautiful park and had a tea picnic beneath the falling leaves that gathered on our blanket as we poured tea with snacks in the golden, long-angled Autumn light. In fact, the light was so beautiful it seemed unreal: it still seems unreal.

We drank TTC Lishan Cui Feng tea along with a second tea: Red Blossom Dong Ding Charcoal Roased wulong. I poured both teas in shiboridashis, one porcelain, white 160ml shib and a green, 140ml, thick-walled shib (nice heat retention for outdoor pours). Both teas came out wonderful. With the slight cool in the air and the lean Autumn light, the Dong Ding Charcoal Roasted wulong tea was really warming, comforting and rich. It had a times notes of tobacco, cocoa, raisin, and a very wonderful sweet that followed the middle rounds' attack. It is a great tea with nice longevity/evolution through the rounds.

Today I pour 7 rounds of SDIQ Qing Xin wulong in a Petr Novak, 150ml pot with Brita water at 93-95 deg. C. Nice, but not epic rounds...however, still quite enjoyable.

Enjoying some Winter 2012 'fine' Luanze Oolong from Chang Shu Hu in Ali Shan at work, purchased from Tea Masters. Good times in rainy Lund. This tea has definitely set a new bar for me regarding greenish Gao Shan (not that I'm super-knowledgable, but hopefully I'm getting there slowly).

I started the session with a different Gao Shan that I bought earlier this year from a different vendor and I don't know if it has gone stale or if it is just completely inferior compared the Ali Shan, because I threw it out after the first brew and went for the Ali Shan above instead. I used to enjoy that other Gao Shan, except for that it always made me feel slightly weird in my throat. So off-taste and pesticide-suspicion, no thanks, I have better teas to drink (luckily)

Mi Lan Xiang Phoenix Mountain Dancong from Verdant's tea club for November. Very floral (jasmine, oh the jasmine), sour, potent. Grapefruit shines through. Nice if you're into that sort of thing, but not my everyday cuppa tea, so this will be a once in a while venture! Must say, with the two oolongs on offer this month, the bag sizes are great and for a small gaiwan user I will get plenty out of them!

More Jin Guan Yin from Norbu this evening, after starting the day with leftover leaves of Bai Yun (Yunnan) from Norbu, and splitting the oolongs with a session of 2009 Lao Cha Tou shu pu. A very nice tea day.

Soon I should receive the same tea harvested in November, probably produced by the same person. If it is as good as the spring version, taking into account the relatively low price, I could buy a good amount to drink in the coming months.

Here, the sky is moody and the day crisp and cold with a steady breeze. This casts a wonderful tea drinking light in the tea room. For the mood I pour TFT Lishan Wuling tea in a glazed 150ml Petr Novak pot, paired with 70ml Peter Novak glazed cups. I am very much enjoying this tea and, after today's pour, now have only 7 grams left for a final pour. My first three rounds were really wonderful...stop me in my tracks and still me kind of wonderful. I just sat with the lingering flavor for a long time between sips.

I poured 7 rounds before stopping and the 7th round sweet water was so tasty. I really enjoyed this tea, even over TFT's Long Feng Xia tea, which I ordered at the same time.

I'm about to brew the eighth infusion of some very mellow 2010 Half-handmade Shui Xian from EOT. It helps to use a 40 mg shib - just large enough to saturate my tissues with Yancha and small enough to finish in one day.

Here's a better photo of the cup, which is from Shyrabbit. It arrived just as I was debating what tea to drink. The size and esthetics pointed me toward this Bezo shib and Yancha.

This is the second Lao Cong SX yancha I try. I think this tea has some more complexities and interesting tingling sensations on the tounge when drinking and afterwards. Is this hui gan? I read somehere hui gan being described as minty tasting, but this was more of a minty or mineraly (?) sensation rather than flavour.

Anyway, I'm going to spend more time with both teas before giving any further descriptions since I'm still quite new to SX yancha. It's very rewarding to try two different kinds though since they have very similar flavour profiles, but have subtle differences that I wouldn't be able to point out if it wasn't for their different "EQ-ing" in lack of better terms

Nice tea, this time brewed with more leaf, gaiwan 50% full with dry leaf to get some more punch out of it. Still neither this tea or the one I got from from TTC has captured me fully. Perhaps braggards tea is not for me.

The best OB I've had was actually the cake from Mountain tea, although I suspect that is not how an ordinary oriental beauty should taste.

bliss wrote:This is the second Lao Cong SX yancha I try. I think this tea has some more complexities and interesting tingling sensations on the tounge when drinking and afterwards. Is this hui gan? I read somehere hui gan being described as minty tasting, but this was more of a minty or mineraly (?) sensation rather than flavour.

I don't have too much experience with yancha myself, but I believe that what you are describing may be "rock flavor." Hui gan is a retuning sweetness. This is term is often used in regards to young puerh, as stronger stuff can be first sweet, then bitter, and end with a returning sweetness. But you could also skip the bitter step, and have tea that starts out sweet, and then has a second wave of sweetness. A minty sensation is often described as camphor, similar to the menthol effect when you breath in after eating a breath mint. Of course, any of these can be combined, and someone more versed in such terms may be able to describe them better.

bliss wrote:This is the second Lao Cong SX yancha I try. I think this tea has some more complexities and interesting tingling sensations on the tounge when drinking and afterwards. Is this hui gan? I read somehere hui gan being described as minty tasting, but this was more of a minty or mineraly (?) sensation rather than flavour.

I don't have too much experience with yancha myself, but I believe that what you are describing may be "rock flavor." Hui gan is a retuning sweetness. This is term is often used in regards to young puerh, as stronger stuff can be first sweet, then bitter, and end with a returning sweetness. But you could also skip the bitter step, and have tea that starts out sweet, and then has a second wave of sweetness. A minty sensation is often described as camphor, similar to the menthol effect when you breath in after eating a breath mint. Of course, any of these can be combined, and someone more versed in such terms may be able to describe them better.

Thanks for clearing these terms up. I tried reading up on camphor the other day, but couldn't make out what taste that would translate to. Good to know it's the methol effect. My cake of the 2004 "private order" Malaysia stored sheng from EoT definitely has this.

Funny, the reason I put "mineraly" in the description is because I have some very vague memory of this tingling sensation happening after having some stone in my mouth as a child (granite? flint? or was it some metal? ) and thought that maybe this effect was due to minerals in the stone. So this feeling/sensation/taste being called "rock flavor" makes sense